How to Survive a Marriage

How to Survive a Marriage is a daytime soap that follows a tightknit group of characters wrestling with private and public pressures in 1970s America. At its center is Dr. Julie Franklin, whose professional life intersects with complex relationships and shifting loyalties among friends and spouses. The series sketches how marriages strain under career demands, social expectations and personal secrets, while new romances and old grudges complicate everyday choices. Storylines focus on emotional negotiations rather than sensational twists, and the show moves between clinics, homes and social settings as alliances shift and characters reveal unexpected sides of themselves.

The series premiered on NBC on January 7, 1974 and ran until April 17, 1975. It was created by Anne Howard Bailey with significant input from NBC vice president Lin Bolen. The working title was From This Moment and the show was produced in-house by the network.

The program did not collect major industry awards or high-profile nominations during its brief run, and it attracted limited critical recognition at the time. Its short lifespan kept it out of most daytime award conversations.

Although short-lived, the soap has a niche place in television history, noted by some observers for its female lead, its involvement from Lin Bolen during a transitional era at NBC, and for featuring performers like Rosemary Prinz and an early screen appearance by Armand Assante. Collectors and soap historians mention it when tracing network strategies for daytime programming in the mid 1970s.

Contemporary reception was mixed to negative, and user ratings remain low, with a small sample showing a 3.0/10 average. The series centers on marriage, gender expectations, career pressures and moral choices, and it often felt uneven to viewers who expected stronger hooks or longer-running threads. It ended after a little more than a year, remembered mostly by dedicated soap fans and television historians.